Note 264 — Chapter V

“The belief, common later, that the soul of the dead was not admitted immediately to the realm of Hades, but wandered in loneliness on its confines until the body was either burned or buried, is clearly expressed only in this (Patroclus) passage, while possibly in only one other can it be assumed, in all the Homeric poems. The wish for speedy rites sprang from a simpler cause; men did not want to have the bodies of their friends, or of themselves, torn by wild beasts or vultures: nor does this even begin to show that they had inherited old beliefs with regard to the connection between the soul of the dead and the body, which this soul had once inhabited, leading to a certain treatment of the body. That in earlier times, and perhaps by many Greeks of Homer’s age, the soul was thought to maintain a species of connection with the body, and to care for it, cannot be doubted. But caution is necessary that it may not be assumed that the Greeks, who maintained certain customs, inherited also the beliefs on which those customs were originally based” (Seymour, op. cit., p. 462).